


cigarette burns on synthetic skin

by slashsailing



Category: Almost Human, Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Drug Abuse, Drug Addiction, Drug Withdrawal, F/M, Light Angst, M/M, Unrequited Love, android sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-19
Updated: 2014-02-19
Packaged: 2018-01-13 02:08:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,370
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1208872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/slashsailing/pseuds/slashsailing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jim Kirk: the young enfant terrible of robotics, a superstar in the world of technology but a coked-out, Bends-addled playboy at the same time. He's a twenty-seven year old recluse, held up in his penthouse apartment-slash-laboratory, taking all the drugs he needs to get him through the day. He’s young, gorgeous, brilliant, paranoid, has a lab full of robots for company and remodels them whenever he feels like something different in his bed. But he’s getting bored, and when he gets bored, he gets unhinged. He goes to the ‘net for entertainment and finds the site of some sicko who’s strapping bombs with countdown timers around people’s throats. </p><p>He leans in and watches as the last one, the gruff, sarcastic police officer, manages to deactivate his bomb and save himself and laughs in relief. He’s not bad. He’s not bad at all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	cigarette burns on synthetic skin

 

  
 -

It must be a Tuesday, Jim thinks, it must be. Christopher is here with some much needed food supplies, enough Bends to keep him high as a kite without running the risk of an overdose, and a few other select treats. Treats that he hopes start with 'benz' and end in some kind of 'ine'. He just needs to be allowed that numbness, the numbness he's become so accustomed to. It helps him breathe: helps him see things clearer. The cogs of his over-active, too-brilliant brain, are always turning and it makes him dizzy, sick to the stomach, it makes him want to rip his lungs out. He needs to quiet the numbers, quiet the circuits, especially now that he has little to set his hands to. Nothing to hold his focus. The drugs keep him contained, keep him manageable.

It must be a Tuesday: he can smell fresh croissants. He sets down the small electric plate he’s working on, steps away from the bench and exhales. His palms are starting to sweat. His fingers almost shake.

It must be a Tuesday. _Please_ let it be a Tuesday.

“Jim,” Christopher calls, “you downstairs?”

“In the lab,” Jim concurs, steeling himself; Christopher is the only person whose opinion is of any importance to Jim, he hates to disappoint the man, and seeing Jim like this, strung up, withdrawal licking at the edges of his skin, curling at his sides like burning paper, can only lead to shame and regret for Christopher. He pinches the soft skin on the inside of his right biceps. Pinches until it hurts. Until it bruises. He closes his eyes: thinks of red skin turning purple, white moon-shaped indents to mark the bite of his nails. He frowns hard until this strange rush, somewhat of a mute, dull, haze of a headache, abates. When he reopens his eyes Christopher is standing there: gaze even; no hint of disappointment or discomfort at what he’s confronted with, what he’s created. Christopher’s been his mentor since Jim was a child, since little eight year old Jimmy’s IQ test came back off the charts and Winona needed someone who knew how to handle a kid smarter than she was.

“What you working on?” Christopher wonders, gesturing down at the circuitry out on the table and the holographic data inscription running on his custom built computer system. The question is a guilt-riddled one, one that says _'I should never have brought you here, never should have set you to work like some pseudo Doctor Frankenstein_ '. But Jim has made his own choices and he's happy, to a lesser or greater extent, to live with them. He scoffs, feels a spike of pity for Victor: Jim knows the burden of creating life, or trying to at least, knows the fear that the life, the human essence, you're trying to simulate may fail. But, unlike Victor, Jim created no monsters, just reduced himself to one.

“Some things for the bots," he says vaguely, turning to Christopher, "something more developed for the sexual response, something more alive,” he continues, voice a reverent whisper as his fingers trail over the new dynamic core he's trying his damnedest to perfect. He shakes his head, trying to clear it.

“You’ve revolutionised those sexbots Jim, anymore and you’ll be treading on regulation, don’t overreach, huh, Icarus?” he jibes gently, and Jim scoffs.

“If I’d have made those wings he could’a flown as close as he wanted to the sun,” Jim states, smiling lazily, “how’s mom?”

“She’s okay; she worries about you, thinks you should get out more,” Christopher replies, like he does every week.

“Nothing changes,” Jim snorts.

Jim hasn’t left the house much since he almost had an unpatented design sold to the fucking media by some hussy with more ambition than integrity. It makes him seethe to think about it. Jim’s mind is his wealth, and, more to the point, Jim’s mind is like a rare metal, a jewel only harvested from the deepest, darkest core of the Earth. Jim’s mind is no one’s but his own. His talent is no one’s but his own. Just the thought of having something he’s worked hard on sold down the river makes bile rise in his throat. It makes his vision fizzle black. Crackling. Brittle.

Bottom line: it's made him fucking paranoid.

The drugs don’t help, obviously. But he needs them; he’s been snorting coke since he was sixteen, had his hands on vials of the Bends since it hit the streets a few weeks after his twenty-second birthday – it was much more risky then: too heavily opiate based. Not the way the Bends is now: smoother; a more straight forward upper, like some hybrid mix of MDMA and Benzedrine. It’s cleverer now, the opiate hits early, you have the fade, the lull, the only time Jim’s brain can relax, then the second wave hits, the wave that makes Jim faster, stronger, smarter, quicker, better. And on top of his already startling mind, the second phase is terrifying. Awe-inspiring too, but, for the people around him, terrifying.

So he needs his drugs. Christopher gets that. Gets _them_. Gets anything Jim asks for.

It's pretty much a given that Jim’s going to die before he’s thirty anyway, why not go out with a bang? He’s done everything else twenty years too soon, it’s only inevitable that he’s on death’s door. He scoffs, wonders if death is ready for him. He almost didn’t make it to twenty-six; taking speedballs on his own because he wouldn’t let a living soul anywhere near him. His heart almost stopped.

Some days he wishes it had. He’s just so bored. So lonely.

“You wouldn’t be bored if you let a few people come around on occasion, you used to be swamped with people,” Christopher states, and Jim realises he might be talking to himself aloud.

“Whores,” Jim corrects, “sluts and hussies and fucking leeches, not people.”

“It was one guy, Jim,” Christopher reminds, “not everyone is like that.”

“You’re not,” Jim agrees, “but you’re day is Tuesday.”

Christopher sets a paper bag on the bench, and sets down a canvas bag on the floor, “you can get your groceries ordered, you know,” but Jim shakes his head.

“Then I’d have to deal with delivery people, which means I’d have to open the door, which means those pap drones would be in like a shot,” Jim explains, “I’m not having this argument with you again.”

“Who’s arguing?” Christopher counters, raising his hands, “I’m just saying.”

"We'll don't," Jim grits, jaw clenching. His fingers itch for that paper bag, need claws at him. It makes his stomach raw, gastric acid burning up his esophagus, licking his tonsils.

"Don't get tight with me, son," Christopher warns, pushing the bag closer to Jim, closing his eyes as he does so.

"I'm sorry," Jim whispers, not quite in control of his vocal chords, they're useless, sloppy and floundering, like cutgut that still hasn't been primed and twisted into violin strings. "Thank you," he adds softly, every bit the abashed school boy. He's earnest, at least in part, he knows how much Christopher does for him: everything in his power as the city's governor. He's so busy. Busier than Jim, that's for sure. But Christopher can handle his mind, handle the cogs as they turn - doesn't let them crush his fingers or mangle his organs. That being said, Christopher has an elite team to keep his affairs in order.

Jim's only got Jim. And Spock of course, but that's different, Spock is just, for the most part, an intrusive voice-over. Jim's unsure whether or not Spock is merely a figment of his imagination. No, he remembers now: his fifteen year old triumph, the proof that ran concurrent to his dissertation. Spock is Jim's home computing system, he handles the utilities, is Jim's private banker, the most perfectly logical company to counterbalance Jim's intoxicated passion. Spock is Jim's youthful homage to Tony Stark, his own personal J.A.R.I.S; Jim spent that summer nicknamed Iron Teen - he was rather thrilled at the time but he understands the slight mockery of it now.

"I should be off," Christopher says, "let you get on with things."

"Yeah," Jim nods, wrapping his fist around the scrunched opening of the brown paper bag, "I guess."

Jim would love to tell Christopher to stay, but he can't, can he? What would he say? 'We should hang out, do some blow together'? No, that isn't Christopher. And, if Jim's inclined to be honest, he's never been one for sharing. Not since he's become a veritable hermit, anyway. It was different back then, back in his late teens, the first step into his twenties, when he was the ideal playboy. Too much intellect to house any common sense in that pretty head of his. He wanted too hard and he wouldn't let others restrict him; he had a want that was too demanding to allow him to listen when Christopher told him no. He'd miss the orgies, he thinks, if he didn't have a room full of perfectly engineered sexbots that know him better, sexually at least, than any human he's ever encountered.

"Bye, son," Christopher sighs, clapping his hand on Jim's shoulder, "I'll see you next week."

"Right," Jim says, confident, Tuesdays are alway something he looks forward to. It's the start of his week; Christopher's visits are the only way he'd know what day it is. It's the initial shock that stimulates the pulse of his days, the first beat in the erratic, rhythm turned symphony of his ever-crumbling life. It's like Christopher knows just when the music might stop, and while every good composition needs an end, he can't bear to let go just yet.

Jim could always, of course, ask Spock if he really needed to relocate himself in reality, but he's forbidden Spock from telling him the time or date automatically anymore. It feels too much like a countdown.

Christopher leaves without too much more fuss, just a kiss to Jim's temple and the reassurance that 'we'll always be here for you, son' before he heads out of the basement, out of Jim's laboratory, walks through the rest of his warehouse apartment and back into the world. Like going from black and white to Technicolor, Jim assumes, he'll be joining that touch of vibrancy himself soon. So soon.

He rips open the bag, eager and desperate, excited and needy; his heart stutters, flutters, races... There are pills that Jim knows to be a nuevo-variant on ecstasy. He tips two into his palm, throws them back, tilts his chin and swallows. He doesn't wait. Knows they'll take a good half an hour or so, _longer_ , he thinks bitterly, to locate the right receptors. So he unfolds the bag of coke, a thin puff of powder bouncing into the air, he inhales, like it'll make a difference, before he begins to cut a few lines with a thin sheet of titanium, the bottom plate of some invention that will never see the light of day.

He looks down at the delicate trail of powder, and cuts it into smaller bumps. He contemplates waiting a touch longer, maybe he’ll wake one of the bots first; and yet, he's not certain that he wants to play right now. But then again… His red head, he decides. Gaila. Although, her skin could do with a retouch; her eyes might look nicer green too, instead of the pale grey they’ve been for the past couple of months. Maybe he should work on her for a bit; wait. Play later.

He shakes his head, snorts the little bumps in quick succession, they burn deep, right down the back of his throat. Scorching. Raw. Perfect.

He exhales. A relieved, awe-filled, ‘o’ pulling at his lips. He can feel his heart racing. He feels like he’s finally coming back to himself, like his heart is racing towards a home it has recently abandoned. Now, though, Jim should be in a better frame of mine, he should know what he wants.

He's got a blonde bot, he remembers, calls her Christine. Her hair is almost white, he likes that about the bots. He can decide anything about them. Sometime he tints the ends of her hair pretty pastel colours, makes her call him Daddy. Sometimes he's content with her filthy outcries of ‘ _God_ ’.

His third bot is a male, but Jim doesn't trust men, doesn’t trust _him_ , and so subsequently hasn't done anything but tinker with his mechanisms for the last two years.

He’s forgotten the bot’s name. Leo maybe. _Bones._

 

#

Jim turns the television on, “surf the black web, Spock,” Jim instructs, “find something entertaining”.

“Our definitions of entertaining differ, Jim,” Spock voice floods into the bedroom, “you do not run by the dictionary and even my colloquial routine cannot attempt to estimate what it is you want.”

“Let me surf then,” Jim says, “pull up the pages with the most hits currently and I’ll flick between,” he instructs and Spock complies easily.

The first is a hardcore porn link but he’s not in the mood, he flicks to another screen that Spock has pulled up into the side bar: a man with what looks like a bomb around his throat. Jim frowns, it only takes him a few moments to identify the way the thing works, and that it is, in fact, real. There is the siren of a cop car in the background and the slight flash of blue and red lights. Jim’s intrigued, he sits forward and lets the scene unfold. Eventually the car is stopped and the cops get out of the car; one’s a droid, Jim notes: a DRN. They approach the dude with the bomb, and then, the outward facing camera of the device sets its view on the other cop, the human.

Jim forgets how to breathe, “print-screen that shot,” he orders and has no concern that Spock would fail to hear his command or dare ignore it.

He watches the final few seconds, until the bomb blows and the screen goes black.

It wasn’t _that_ thrilling; he snorts another line of coke on his way to the printer, which is, decidedly, thrilling, like little circuits fizzling and snapping in the pit of his stomach, like popping candy in his head. He asks Spock to print the image on their high gloss paper.

Jim’s got his first vial of the Bends set up on the kitchen worktop; he knocks back the green liquid, barely flinching at the rusted, acidic taste. It hits quick, he feels the burn down his throat, the fizzle into something warm and pleasant; it’s sharp and wonderful. Jim exhales deep, like just after an orgasm, except it doesn’t fade like la petite mort, it lasts, hits again and again, and when Jim looks down at the page he gasps.

Those eyes.

A ring of dark blue that startle into amber and green: dark emerald green but also paler shades; shades that human’s don’t have. Didn’t have. Because this man. This man has those unreal eyes, but he's had life bled into them too. They are angry and fond, they are terrified and brave. They are the contradiction Jim tries to create synthetically. These eyes are above Jim's power. Beyond his ability to craft. These, the eyes of this meddlesome detective, are alight with the blazing warmth of the sun, contained only by a thin ring of the ocean’s depths. Jim absently wonders if, like the sun, one can look directly into those eyes? Will they blind him? Will they burn? 

“Save this channel,” Jim says gently, “and run the photo, see if we can find out who the eyes belong to.”

“Jim, the male in this photograph has been identified as a Detective Kennex, John, R.,” Spock explains, almost instantly, like he’s able to guess what Jim might do, predict his every wish, even though he can’t, and expresses so frequently.

“Download his personal details to my iPad, I’ll have a look later; I need a shower right now,” he says, “get the water in the ensuite ready, and notify me if that network hosts another live stream from that user.”

“Enjoy your shower, Jim,” is all Spock says, but even high as a kite Jim can tell that his voice sounds tight, tighter than usual anyway, which is simultaneously more and less synthetic. It’s like he’s completely disagreeing with everything Jim’s asked him to do even though he can’t, and wouldn’t even if he could. It’s the eye roll voice, Jim decided that long ago, but it never fails to make him grin like a naughty school boy.

The next video goes live just as Jim is settling down to pour himself something fruity and curl up with his modified iPad for the night. He’s in the kitchen and Spock is unhesitant in pulling it up onto the screen on the far wall. It’s a woman this time, she goes to a park and dances, it’s so bad Jim might have been tempted to blow her up had he had the controls. But he doesn’t, he just continues to watch, slightly annoyed, hoping beyond hope that someone calls the cops.

But they don’t have to, Detective Kennex is there a few minutes into the footage, he and his DRN are trying to deactivate the bomb. He’s terrified, Jim can tell, and that spark of fear lights a fire in Jim’s own bones, he wants to see that terror up close, want to ignite some sort of passion into those eyes, all for himself.

 _Greedy_ , he thinks, but true.

They save the woman, only a few seconds left on the clock, and the connection is cut.

“Pull up the live news, Spock, see if they’re covering this,” Jim says, but the incident only gets a small one line synopsis that scrolls across the screen, under the playback of today’s soccer game. Jim feels so alone in that moment, without those brown-blue-green-grey-gold eyes. Like a white sky in winter: no sunshine; no grass; no life; just the cold chill and the blue lake turned to white ice. He feels cold.

“Notify me if another video should surface,” Jim says, “comment on the feed, tell him to get the cop more involved.”

 

 #

He didn’t mean for John Kennex to end up with a bomb around his own throat.

He’s completely furious, sat forward, panting, on tenterhooks, shaking, until the detective gets himself out of the scrape. With less than two seconds to spare. He laughs, and Jim finds himself sharing in the moment of relief. Detective Kennex’s laugh would sound better in person; deep and rich, like the glug of a full-bodied Bourbon being poured into crystal glasses. Jim waits for his heart rate to steady before he goes in search of his second vial of Bends for the day. Then he heads down to the lab, he just sits on the floor opposite his male bot for a while, watching it. Eyes black because he’s powered off. So alike to Kennex, though; it’s as if Kennex came to him in a dream and Jim tried to recreate the officer from memory. But he’s never seen Detective Kennex before today; he built this bot nearly four years ago.

Uncanny.

He hasn’t taken the male bot to bed in two years, but that’s what he needs tonight; he needs the programmed Southern drawl and the weight of a synthetic cock in his hand.

But it’s so empty. So artificial.

He wants John Kennex. And he wants him _bad_.

 

 #

He places a call that is rerouted to look like it’s been intercepted from a house in a nice neighbourhood with two point five children and a cute little lapdog yapping in the front yard, he gives the automated voice his home details but is able to hack the system shortly after and make the record appear like the reported incident took place at said house.

“Please,” Jim says, “I need to speak to Detective Kennex,” he tries to manage a weak and winded voice, channels how he sounds in the early hours of Monday morning when his withdrawals are starting to set in.

“We will send an officer to you as soon as one becomes available, Sir,” the computer informs him.

“It has to be Kennex, I won’t talk to anyone else,” he grits out.

“Noted,” is all the automation says before disconnecting the call.

He gets paranoid though; he re-hacks the system and deletes all record of his call once Detective Kennex has been deployed.

 

 #

When the electronic door chime sounds, Jim sighs, relieved. Spock informs him the Detective has made this trip without his DRN and while Jim is disappointed from an engineer’s perspective it makes everything far simpler.

Detective John Kennex is a man of broad shoulders, narrow waist and muscled thighs unlike anything Jim could create. His eyes appear darker than they really are because of the seriousness of them, the gravity those irises hold. Jim smiles when he opens the door, glances around for any trace of paparazzi and is relieved to find that no one else is lingering around his property. Jim is warm and inviting but contorts his own features with a hint of fear and trepidation befitting of someone who has something slightly risqué to inform the police.

“So,” John starts, taking time to glance around the entrance hall, “how is it I can help you today?”

“I have information on some narcotic rackets,” Jim says slowly, allowing his voice to waver, “could I offer you something to drink, officer? Coffee, maybe?”

“Sure, thanks,” John nods, padding around the room, looking at various knickknacks and waiting for the proffered coffee.

Jim steps into his kitchen area, takes a single pill out of the cabinet while he lifts the coffee decanter with the other hand, pressing the pill against the counter with his thumb until it crushes under the pressure. He won’t need much just puts a pinch of it into the cup, filling it with coffee and stirring it before turning back to watch John nonchalantly gaze out of the window.

“I hope this’ll do,” Jim says gently, walking closer to the detective, extending the cup in his direction. Jim is holding the brim of the cup, it’s a glass mug, tinted red at the bottom and fading back to clear as it gets closer to the rim. John takes the cup by the handle, tendered towards him, and nods.

“Thanks,” John returns, his voice is not as gravelly as it sounded through the feed, Jim thinks, it’s more organic, earthy. It’s deep, yes, husky too, but not akin to metal or stone; it’s more like water filtered through soil, making it thick and heavy. It’s warm, Jim decides, and comforting.

He smiles at Jim, takes a long gulp of his coffee.

It’s only another three sips before he asks Jim if he can sit on the couch.

There’s only a finger full left in the cup when John’s eyes begin to close.

 #

He doesn’t need to use both of them, one would be strong enough, but Jim wakes both Gaila and Christine anyway. He’s not sure whether to put him in one of the spare rooms or the lab. To be very honest he has no idea what he’s doing. He doesn’t know why he’s drugged the detective. Well, he does, on a basic level. Although, he can’t be certain when he went for drug-addled hermit to unhinged kidnapper; a thought that makes him grin slightly. He takes two aspirin and decides to cuff John to the bed in the spare room next to his own.

The property is split-levelled, there are technically four floors, the basement, which compromises solely of his lab, then half a flight of stairs up there are two bedrooms and a bathroom, the ground floor is made up of the open kitchen-dining-lounge area and the entry foyer, and another half a flight of stairs upward comprises of another bedroom, another bathroom and his office.

Jim realises something before the high kicks in: he has absolutely no idea what he’s going to do when John wakes up. He wants the company, yes, he’s pretty sure he wants to fuck John too, but he’s not going to force himself on the detective, he’s not going to _hurt_ him.

He panics.

“Gaila, take him back down to the sitting room,” Jim orders, “take a blood test, see how much of the drug is still in his system, upload the data to Spock, I need to know how long he’s going to be out.”

“There is another substance in his blood,” Spock says, almost as soon as Gaila has inputted the blood into his own system, “a black market narcotic.”

“What is it?”

“An antidepressant and a memory stimulant,” Spock replies, “it has increased the effect of the Benzodiazepine, he should remain unconscious for another twenty minutes.”

“Get him downstairs, Gaila,” Jim repeats.

“I’ll say he just collapsed,” Jim says, to no one really, but Spock hears everything, “I’ll say I was trying to bring him round, that I have an ambulance called, he’ll tell me to cancel it, he’s too proud. I’ll get you to run a diagnostic, you’ll say that his black market medical had some sort of adverse reaction, he’ll feel embarrassed, asked me to be discreet, it’ll build rapport,” Jim rambles, “Spock, tell me everything is going to be okay?”

“If Detective Kennex fails to deduce that you yourself are under the influence,” Spock states.

“Oh shit,” a wave of realisation hits Jim, the Bends is flowing through his system now, hitting his receptors, soon he’ll be riding a high he has no control over.

He could say or do _anything_.

Jim takes to the stairs again, grabs a bottle of water from the kitchen and begins to drink from it, watching as Gaila sets John’s unconscious body down on the sofa. Jim brings another bottle over with him and crouches in front of John, wondering what the man will make of opening his eyes and seeing Jim; he schools a look of care and concern into his features and waits.

Eyes flutter.

John makes a noise of confusion, mild irritation too maybe – he’s groggy, Jim supposes.

“You fainted,” Jim starts gently, “I ah, I called an ambulance.”

“Cancel it,” John slurs trying to sit up.

“I don’t think-”

“Cancel it.”

“Spock, inform the emergencies services we no longer need their intervention,” Jim says.

“You have a home hologram security system?”

“One of my own design, don’t trust the big companies,” Jim explains, “he’s custom designed, not a holo though, just the voice and controls, here,” he continues, handing John the second bottle of water. “I had Spock run a diagnostic, I know it isn’t my place-”

“It isn’t,” John agrees gruffly.

“You had a reaction,” Jim says tentatively, “to the drugs in your system.”

John looks at him warily. He inhales and looks away from Jim. “I’m on medication for rejection of a synthetic limb, it’s-”

“You don’t have to lie,” Jim says with a smile, “I’m not interested in ratting out cops.”

“No,” John says, slumping against the back of the sofa, “you’re interested in ratting out drug dealers; I’m a little more interested in that.”

“I lied,” Jim says, and he doesn’t know why. He’s panicked, he’s drugged… “I called you because… Because I-I saw you on the feed of that Simon Says stream,” Jim explains, “you look like a bot I made about four years ago… It spooked me a bit, I needed to see you for myself, see the similarities.”

“You’re saying you’ve made an android version of me, before ever seeing me?” John repeats.

“It’s crazy,” Jim shrugs, “the resemblance is _scary_.”

“Maybe you’ve seen me in passing,” John suggests, “either way, you’ve seen me now… And I should really get back to the station, you know, in case I’m _actually_ needed.”

Jim nods solemnly. “Sure,” he tries to sound nonchalant, “of course.”

John frowns at Jim, eyes searching… piecing things together, maybe seeing the dilation of Jim’s pupils, they must be huge, the Bends always makes them huge – hardly any blue left at all.

“What’ve you taken?” John asks.

“’s not really any of your concern, officer. It’s black market though,” Jim smirks, words tumbling out of his mouth before he can stop them, “although I’m not sure you could get it at a recollectionists.”

John eyes’ are harsh now, and his jaw tenses; Jim watches the shift of muscles in his throat; it’s almost erotic. Jim chuckles at himself, which startles John slightly.

“Look, I gotta go.”

“See you ‘round,” is all Jim says, leaning against the kitchen counter, waiting for the hysteric feeling at the front of his forehead and inside his lungs to fade. He carefully watches John head to the door; John, who turns back to look at Jim once more before unlatching the lock and stepping outside.

 

 #

Jim is discontent with this ending though, and tells Spock as much, who, due to his logic-based programming, offers very little emotionally driven advice. Detective Kennex was not aroused when interacting with Jim and therefore it is doubtful he would wish to seek an intimate relationship with him. Jim is displeased, to say the least, with that conclusion although he isn’t sure what exactly he’s meant to do about it.

John is unlikely to return to Jim’s apartment even if Jim calls the precinct; and since Jim makes it a point not to leave his abode it seems unlikely that they’ll cross paths again in a more organic fashion. So what is Jim to do?

He does what he’s good at: he tinkers with the male bot. Leo, he’s sure that was its name;  _Bones_ when he was high and hallucinating.

He tries to use the houses surveillance to recreate John’s irises – it seems the best place to start. A different haircut too. The first time he fucks it he’s high, but he doesn’t call out a name when he comes. Jim thinks that means he's not getting in too deep. He pulls up John’s file, sieves through biological information and medical reports, trying to learn about scars and distinguishing marks that will make the bot more _real_. He doesn’t get very far though, he learns about a three inch scar that stretches horizontally over his chest, under his clavicle on the left hand side, close to his armpit; and two tattoos, a ‘Chinese dragon’ and ‘simple line work’ which doesn’t really give him much to go on, although both are on a shoulder - he just doesn’t know which design is on which shoulder and he doesn’t know what ‘simple line work’ means in relation to John’s skin.

Now that he’s read about it, he wants to see it.

He wonders if he can hack into John’s home system. John doesn’t seem like the type of man who would have surveillance in place; he seems old-fashioned, a bit of a technophobe. He’d just like to see him again, try and capture the way he moves; see if he has any other tattoos, perhaps more _intimately_ positioned. Instead, Jim focuses on using Spock’s recorded audio flies to reprogram the bot’s voice.

It’s easy enough to turn his almost-John-bot into John-replica-bot but it’s still not the same as having warm human flesh pressed against your in bed every night.

The bot doesn’t tell Jim to shut up half as much as Jim imagines John would either. The attitude is still too automated, still too sex-bot-friendly. The bot doesn’t wince when Jim presses the butt of his blunt into its skin, watching the creamy colour contort and turn black, synthetic material curling and crisping in the way human flesh would never.

The bot does whisper _‘I love you’_ though, and frequently; _and_ , no matter how much he wishes it would, it doesn’t quite frustrate him. It _should_ , but he’s growing soft to the bot. To John. The words actually comfort him some.

It’s not perfect, but apparently it’s the best Jim’s going to get. 

**Author's Note:**

> Originally based on this tumblr post by steamedporkbun: http://slashsailing.tumblr.com/post/74295378551/steamedporkbun-i-was-looking-at-almost-human


End file.
